Pretence for Prattle

Steven Shapin

During the four centuries of its presence in British life, tea has made the transition from the exotically novel to the domestically ordinary, from a drug with possibly potent psychoactive powers to the mere ‘cup that cheers’, from a focus of social ritual to a casually taken and often solitary drink, from control by a quasi-state monopoly to a series of branded products largely dominated by multinational firms, from an artisanal to an industrial product. The idea of tea was once tightly linked to the idea of China; by the 18th century, its consumption was coming to be identified with the idea of Britishness. In 1863, the Birmingham grocer whose son founded the Typhoo brand boasted that ‘the great Anglo-Saxon race are essentially a tea-drinking people’. Tea was once a luxury reserved for the elite, then – mainly through changes in the management of trade and taxation – it became the most democratic of drinks. Centre stage in scenes of social intimacy, tea was also for centuries a focus of political economy, the conduct of government and the practice of international relations.

During these transformations, tea has retained distinct identities: it’s a botanically specific plant (Camellia sinensis), a desiccated product manufactured from the leaves of that plant, a drink made by infusing the dried leaves in hot water or an occasion of its consumption – a drink taken by almost everyone but that still has powers of regional and class distinction. There’s ‘afternoon tea’, ‘cream tea’, ‘high tea’ or ‘tea’ as the evening meal; bags v. loose, ‘builder’s tea’ with three sugars in a mug v. weak Earl Grey in ‘Royal Doulton with the hand-painted periwinkles’. The giving of tea can be an emotional gesture (‘tea and sympathy’). Tea-taking in its various modes is still – as cigarettes once were – a prop for playing the role of oneself or for playing one’s part with others.

Tea arrived in 17th-century Europe at the same time as two other important exotic drinks – coffee and chocolate – and, while their social and cultural trajectories diverged, all three shared several characteristics which Western commentators struggled for some time to understand and to normalise. They were each consumed hot (Europeans were not accustomed to taking hot drinks on a routine basis); they had an unfamiliar astringency or bitterness; and they were understood to be psychoactive and (mildly or strongly) addictive. Each was at once a new drink and a new way of being, and it was the new ways of being rather than the new chemicals contained in them that changed the culture. Each came to Europe from a different end of the earth: coffee from Arabia, chocolate from Mesoamerica, tea from China. Each travelled to Europe along channels carved out by violence and novel economic institutions; and each bitter drink cried out for sugar – and was therefore bound up with the institution of slavery.

It’s a story of great scope. The genre of ‘The Food/Drink/Condiment that Made the Modern World’ (salt, spices, maize, cod, oysters, refrigerated beef, the battery chicken, the Big Mac) has become a cliché, and many performances of this sort are shallow, overstated or merely cute. But in the right hands, telling the history of foodstuffs and foodways responds to current calls for histories of wider scope: histories of the longue durée; of global exchanges and contacts between cultures; and of the relations between human doings, things and the environment. Empire of Tea is an important example, sometimes brilliantly told, worth standing alongside Sidney Mintz’s classic Sweetness and Power (1985) as a history of modernity told through one of its consumable commodities.

When Europeans first encountered it in the early 17th century, all the tea in the world came from China and Japan (which had learned about it from China). Travellers and traders in China wanting to understand what tea was, what effects it had, and how it should be used, saw that it was highly valued; that it came in different varieties, with different characteristics and prices; that drinking tea was part of the rhythm of everyday life; that its consumption was governed by elaborate ritual; that the emperor and court indulged; that its equipage (fine porcelain pots and cups) was central to tea-ritual; and that tea was considered to have marked and pleasant psychological effects. It was a sociable drink – a mild stimulant both to the mind and to conversation. Some Europeans in China fell under its spell: they tried it and they liked it, and a few saw its potential as a profitable trade-good – something new to add to the cargos of silks, spices and porcelain carried back overland to Russia and on the ships of Dutch and English trading monopolies.

China tea, in china teapots, poured into china cups: this is still a scene of ‘blue willow’ domesticity whose original Oriental exoticism has been effectively erased from collective memory. Coffee, and the culture of the coffeehouse, attracted more comment in the decades following its introduction in the 1650s, but it was tea that won out in Britain.[*] The historical trajectory of that domestication was, however, neither easy nor uncontested.

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Letters

‘Smugglers were popular figures’ in 18th-century England, Steven Shapin writes, adding that the late Eric Hobsbawm said they were celebrated as ‘social bandits’ (LRB, 30 July). In fact what Hobsbawm said, in Primitive Rebels, was: ‘England, which has given the world Robin Hood, the archetype of the social bandit, has produced no notable example of the species since the 16th century … the miserable village labourers have risen to little more than the modest admiration for exceptionally daring poachers.’ In my contribution to Albion’s Fatal Tree (1975), I challenged Hobsbawm, suggesting that smugglers too, robbers in the eyes of the law, were most often not considered criminals in public opinion, even in such cases as the grisly murders in 1748 of William Galley, a Riding Officer, and Daniel Chater, an informer. The smugglers responsible came from Hawkhurst in Kent. They gained notoriety with their raid on the Custom House at Poole, where they recaptured seized tea. On their return, they ‘breakfasted’ at Fordingbridge, where ‘some hundreds of people were assembled to view the cavalcade.’ They killed Galley and Chater, a witness to the parade, lest they testify against them. It was said at the time that at Hawkhurst ‘five hundred men, armed, can gather in less than an hour’ and that ‘not one person in ten in the countryside would give assistance’ to the Customs men. The smuggler was often seen as a symbol of resistance, to the authorities in general, and in particular to the hated Excise.

Cal Winslow states that smugglers were admired rather than feared by country people, as in the legend of Robin Hood (Letters, 10 September). This is borne out by a fascinating journal in which were recorded letters written by the Excise officers of Penzance to their superiors in London in the early 18th century. The journal is now in the care of the Record Office in Truro. One of these letters, dated 14 December 1749, suggests that the country people not only offered moral support to the smugglers and plunderers of wrecks, but also joined in their enterprises:

Last night was drove on shore by distress of weather in this Bay the Squirrell Snow of North Yarmouth, Henry William Master, from Salox with brandy for Bolloing in France when the Country immediately boarded her, stripped the master of everything valuable then carryed off what brandy they could and in the hurry sett fire to the rest of the cargoe so that the whole ship is now in flames. We hope yr Honrs are by this satisfied there’s nothing to be preserved either by shipwrecks or from smuggling without the assistance of a millitary force.

Another letter complains that the parish constable was unwilling to execute warrants against those suspected of smuggling, while a third protests that even those from whom the Excise men felt they deserved support and assistance were reluctant to intervene:

Mount 25 Jany 1749. Honble Sir. This morning about two o’clock Mr Colman and self met one Harris of Coverack on the western pier, we examined him what brought him there he did not satisfie us, but going on the back of the pier saw a Lugg sail boat let go her anchor. We knew we had not strength sufficient in the place. Mr Colman went immediately to acquaint Mr Elliott at Marazion and to get what help he could. He soon returned with answer that Mr Elliott was very much indisposed and that we must act according to our own discretion. Accordingly we got four hands and rowd off but Harris above observering our motion called to the people on board the boat to be on the guard and to keep us off. We were within an oars length of the boat when we demanded entrance. They swore bitterly we should have none and that they would knock out our brains which they endeavoured to do with a boat hook or long pole and oars. Then they took up stones and threw at us.